Empathy: An Integral Model in the Counseling Process

Expanding on a framework introduced by Carl Rogers, an integral model of empathy in counseling uses empathic understanding through 3 ways of knowing: Subjective empathy enables a counselor to momentarily experience what it is like to be a client, interpersonal empathy relates to understanding a client's phenomenological experiencing, and objective empathy uses reputable knowledge sources outside of a client's frame of reference. Across the counseling process, empathy is integral to treatment strategies and interventions.     

Improving Empathy in Children: Interactive Read-Aloud as a Counseling Intervention

ABSTRACT

The authors describe interactive read-alouds as an effective counseling strategy to improve empathy levels in school aged children. The importance of reading development and empathy development were considered as well. Results of the literature review indicate reading development is an essential building block in school aged children’s future academic development. Furthermore, empathy development in students was deemed important. A lesson plan was created to provide school counselors with a means of implementing the interactive read-aloud as a counseling strategy.     

Overcoming Obstacles to Empathy: The Use of Experiential Learning in Addictions Counseling Courses

Empathy is associated with positive outcomes in addictions counseling. The moral model of addiction and unresolved countertransference issues may hinder counseling students’ development of empathic understanding for clients with substance use disorders. Counselor educators must structure courses in such a way as to help students overcome obstacles to empathy. We provide examples of several experiential activities framed within the context of Kolb’s experiential-learning cycle that are designed to deconstruct obstacles to student empathy development.     

Studying the vocational counseling process: A preliminary examination

In this study, we examined the effects of counselor empathic and coping/mastery self-disclosure statements on clients' impressions of an initial vocational counseling interview. A primary purpose of our study was to reconsider one aspect of the investigation of Watkins et al(1990), in which the counselor responses of self-disclosure, self-involvement, empathy and open question were found to have no differential effects on clients' impressions of vocational counseling. Even though we attempted to provide a more specific test of empathy versus self-disclosure responses, we for the most part also obtained a general lack of significance on the dependent variables. In conjunction with Watkins et al.'s findings, we provide some discussion of our results, and their potential meanings for vocational counseling and future vocational counseling research.     

Promoting Clinical Knowledge,Skills, and Empathy via a Creative Self-Suicide Assignment

Abstract

Suicide is a leading cause of American deaths. Given suicide's overall frequency and negative effects, specialized suicide training is warranted. This article describes a creative self-suicide assignment designed to enhance doctoral students? suicide assessment and intervention knowledge and clinical skills, and promote greater counselor empathy for clients presenting with suicidal ideation. Doctoral students who participated in the assignment reported increased suicide assessment and intervention knowledge and skills, and enhanced empathy toward clients presenting with suicide-related issues. Student summarizations related to their assignment experiences are included.     

Counselor Empathy or “Having a Heart to Help”? An Ethnographic Investigation of Chinese Clients' Experience of Counseling

Current understanding of counselor empathy is almost entirely based on Western culture. Clients'; perceptions of counselor empathy are scarcely investigated within any non-Western group. Using ethnographic interviews, this study explored the concept of counselor empathy from Chinese counseling clients'; perspectives by exploring their experiences of therapeutic relationships. Although informants did not commonly and explicitly consider counselor empathy as a priority in counseling, preliminary results suggest that they may perceive it in Chinese counseling relationships as a different phenomenon linguistically and conceptually.     

EMPIRICAL COMPARISONS OF COUNSELOR ORIENTATIONS

The purpose of this study was to investigate counselor behaviors related to being “counseling oriented” in one's interaction with clients as opposed to being “placement oriented.” The levels of therapeutic conditions (accurate empathy, self congruence, unconditional positive regard, and intensity and intimacy of interpersonal contact) were all positively correlated with being counseling oriented (p<.01). The multiple correlation of the therapeutic conditions with being counseling oriented was .74 with accurate empathy accounting for the major portion of the variance. Further analysis of the frequency of specific counselor responses revealed that counselors who provide high therapeutic conditions, or those who are counseling oriented: (a) manifest a distinctly different pattern of responses; and, (b) are more active in the counseling relationship in terms of total responses.     

Is empathy important in counseling?

Empirical evidence supports the commonly held belief that empathy facilitates psychotherapy outcomes. Complete analysis of the literature identified only six studies of empathy and counseling outcomes. Contrary to expectations, empathy does not appear important in counseling. This article discusses reasons for this finding as well as implications for counseling practice, theory, and research.     

The Relationship Between Mindfulness and Multicultural Counseling Competence

The authors examined the association between multicultural counseling competence (MCC) and mindfulness. Previous authors have maintained a conceptual link between MCC and mindfulness; however, this is the first empirical analysis of the relationship between MCC and mindfulness. Results revealed that, after race/ethnicity, multicultural course completion, and empathy were controlled, components of mindfulness were correlated with multicultural awareness and multicultural knowledge. These results have implications for counselor education, counseling practice, and future research.     

Biological knowledge is more tentative than physics knowledge: Taiwan high school adolescents' views about the nature of biology and physics

Many educational psychologists believe that students' beliefs about the nature of knowledge, called epistemological beliefs, play an essential role in their learning process. Educators also stress the importance of helping students develop a better understanding of the nature of knowledge. The tentative and creative nature of science is often highlighted by contemporary science educators. However, few previous studies have investigated students' views of more specific knowledge domains, such as biology and physics. Consequently, this study developed a questionnaire to assess students' views specifically about the tentative and creative nature of biology and physics. From a survey of 428 Taiwanese high school adolescents, this study found that although students showed an understanding of the tentative and creative nature of biology and physics, they expressed stronger agreement as to the tentativeness of biology than that of physics. In addition, male students tended to agree more than did females that physics had tentative and creative features and that biology had tentative features. Also, students with more years of science education tended to show more agreement regarding the creative nature of physics and biology than those with fewer years.     

Chaos,creativity, and counseling: Aspects of a Transtheoretical model of the counseling process

Counselors ask their clients to become creative in their personal lives and within their counseling process. The process of counseling is a creative process. Growth is necessary for effective improvement in the counseling process. This paper will examine creativity from the point of view of the affective experience of the creator, and the relationship of this experience to the client in counseling.

The position here is that the process of counseling is both a creative process and one that involves tensions and turbulence. Based on a model of nonlinear dynamics, and ideas about the creative process, this study draws a dynamical fractal movie of the counseling process in which the counselor serves as an attractor for the construction of opposites in the client behavior that allow for growth and the construction of a new state of psychosocial events.     

Does Empathy Have Any Place in Aquinas’s Account of Justice?

Recent developments in cognitive science have prompted philosophers to speculate about the importance of empathy, the ability to directly apprehend and take on the mental and emotional states of others, in understanding and being motivated by moral norms—particularly moral norms concerning other humans. In this paper, I investigate whether some kind of empathy is involved in Thomas Aquinas’s account of the virtue of justice, which he describes as essentially other-directed. I claim that a kind of empathy is involved in Aquinas’s notion of friendship and that this notion of friendship is related to justice as a virtue as its goal. Having the virtue of justice is geared towards establishing true friendship, at least in part. In so doing, it is directed towards establishing a sufficient groundwork for genuine empathy. Instances of genuine empathy, then, are approximations of this goal of the work of justice, even if they occur outside the context of a true friendship. Given this, I describe possible roles Aquinas might afford empathy and empathetic emotions in the context of cultivating the virtue of justice, including roles in motivation and knowledge.     

The Relationship of Culture and Empathy in Cross‐Cultural Counseling

Empathy has been identified as a core condition for providing counseling. There are numerous articles discussing the components of empathy. However, as the U.S. becomes increasingly ethnically diverse and the world becomes more globalized, there is little discussion on how empathy will be effective with diverse populations. This article discusses the interaction of culture and empathy and suggests guidelines for establishing cultural empathy.     

Effective Challenging Through Additive Empathy

Empathy is a counseling skill that is highly regarded by most practitioners. Constant reflection of only expressed surface feelings however, may perpetuate a limited view of a client's problem. The ability to extend a client's original understanding is a valuable resource for a helper to offer. Through additive empathy, a helper challenges a client to examine a deep and broad perspective for assessing problems and then to take action. The purposes of this article are to identify some elements of additive empathy and to describe practical guidelines for using the skill in counseling and in systematic skill training.     

Diversification: Counselors' Investment in Humanity—A Student's Opinion

The author argues that diversification can be the basis of the counseling profession's investment in humanity, attempts to inspire a united stance within the profession, and maintains that counseling professionals have a responsibility to share their knowledge of and respect for embracing all people. These statements attempt to capture the perspective of one aspiring to join the ranks of many dedicated and inspiring counseling professionals. Open your eyes and look for some [person], or some work for the sake of [all people], which needs a little time, a little friendship, a little [empathy], a little sociability, a little human toil. … It is needed in every nook and corner; therefore, search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity, —Albert Schweitzer (As cited in Canfield, Hansen, McCarty, & McCarty, 1997, p. 267)     

A festschrift for Carolyn Ingrid Saarni

ABSTRACT

To introduce this special issue honoring Carolyn Saarni, this article provides a brief biography of her career. It highlights Carolyn’s foresight in integrating developmental science and counseling psychology to enlighten our understanding of the development of children’s emotional lives. It also describes some of her most creative research, studies that inspired many scholars to this day. It casts Carolyn’s contributions in the historical changes that have taken place in developmental psychology. Lastly, this article also previews the articles presented by contributing authors who count themselves among Carolyn’s colleagues. Those articles focus on research directions in the study of emotional competence, emotion regulation, emotion knowledge, and emotion socialization that have evolved from and been inspired by Carolyn’s rich contributions to developmental psychology.     

Mistakes as Pathways Towards Creativity in Counseling: A Case Example

ABSTRACT

The relationship between mistakes, improvisation, and counseling process is explored through the use of a case example involving a failed clinical intervention. Exploration of mistakes offers an opportunity to examine multiple elements of counseling while highlighting the creative nature of the counseling process. Counselor educators are encouraged to incorporate discussions of mistakes and creative development into training.     

Sandtray Therapy: A Familial Approach to Healing Through Imagination

The application of creative techniques in counseling is often tailored to a unique problem, and limited by individual characteristics of the client. One intervention, sandtray therapy, a derivative of play therapy, has gained strong momentum as a creative technique. With greater flexibility for treating a much larger population, sandtray therapy is more applicable for families than other creative approaches. The purpose of the current article is to give an overview of sand tray therapy, as well as provide information regarding its use for working with families. Specifically, the authors discuss exactly how counselors can successfully incorporate sandtray therapy in the familial population setting, and describe its application through case study.     

Career Linking: An Intervention to Promote Math and Science Career Awareness

A 1-year intervention was designed to improve minority students' awareness of and preparation for math and science careers. Specifically, goals focused on increasing students' career knowledge, self-esteem, math and science achievement, choice of high school, and high school course selection in math and science. Results indicated success in career knowledge and high school choice and moderate success in achievement, self-esteem, and math and science course selection. Results are discussed in terms of implications for counseling.